Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/297

 9 th S. I. APRIL 9, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

289

31ssex of that period 1 ? I have noted the { rticles on Bedel of Wootton, Bedfordshire, ii the Fifth Series of ' N. & Q.,' including t xtracts from the register of Wootton, Bed- f Drdshire. I can find, however, no Alice, the c aughter of William Beadle. 1 find a William Bedell, brother of Henry Bedell, of Wootton, \'liose will was proved in London 12 May, 1597, and also a William Bedell (probably the same) who married, 1579, Mary Cartwright. If they were the same person, was he the father of Alice who married Gabriel Throck- morton ; and, if so, what was his ancestry 1 C. WICKLIFFE THROCKMORTON.

" PRE-MORTEM." In the Saturday Review, 19 March, p. 399, an article on 'Andree and his Balloon' opens with the remark, "Pre- niortem obituary notices are inconvenient and unpopular." Is "pre-mortem" a form known to legal phraseology ? or is it a new word? or is it merely a whimsicality ? "Ante- mortem " would have required no comment. THOMAS BAYNE.

Helensburgh, N.B.

HWFA OF WALES. Can any of your readers give me the pedigree of Hwfa ap Cynddelw, one of the fifteen princes, who married a daughter of Ednowen of Bendew, and who was living about 1130 A.D. ? His descendant, John Meryck (Merrick), was Bishop of Sodor and Man from 1576 to 1599 ; and another descendant was the late William Harrison, M.H.K., J.P., author of 'Bibliotheca Monensis,' fee., 1802-1885. HWFA BROOKE.

Corby, Lincolnshire.

JAMES HALLIDAY. Can any of your corre- pondents afford information regarding James lalliday, Commissary of Dumfries in the eventeenth century ? H.

JOHN PASSEY was appointed head master f Westminster School between 1555 and 558. Can correspondents of ' N. aid of an envious man. P. S.

Pointed satire runs him through and through. According to Allibone this is from Oldham ; but I annot find the passage in his works. W. G. B.

Conscious of Marsala's worth.

MARTYR.

POPE AND THOMSON. (8 th S. xii. 327, 389, 437; 9 th S. i. 23, 129, 193.)

FEW readers of ' N. & Q. who have fol- lowed this discussion in its pages will dissent from W. B. when he writes that "the subject does not admit of continued dispute" at least, as between him and me. When W. B. can only reiterate that " the pos- sibility that an amanuensis wrote the doubt- ful entries seems plausible enough," I am entitled to assume that my arguments to the contrary are only ignored because they cannot be answered. To the remark that the drift of my argument " makes the revision by the second writer to be Pope's, and yet not Pope's," it is sufficient to reply that the same sort of assertion, with its accompaniments, may be directed against any one who states a like problem fairly.

With respect to the "obvious misprint" in W. B.'s note, it seemed to me that he not only referred to a passage indisputably Thomson's as being in the disputed hand- writing, but drew very important inferences from that assumption. I therefore suggested that, partly through an omission of my own, he misunderstood my critical appendix here. However, that students of * N. & Q.' may see what really was done at the passage referred to, I crave space to quote the text of Thomson as it stood in 'Summer' in 1730 and 1738:

For solemn Song

Is not wild Shakespeare Nature's Boast and thine ? And every greatly amiable Muse Of elder Ages in thy Milton met ? His was the Treasure of two thousand Years, Seldom indulg'd to Man; a God-like Mind, Unlimited, and various, as his Theme, Astonishing as Chaos ; as the bloom Of blowing Eden fair; soft as the talk Of our Grand Parents, and as Heaven sublime.

Exactly what the Unknown would have given was this :

For lofty sense,

Creative fancy, and inspection keen Through the deep windings of the human heart Is not wild Shakespear thine and Nature's boast ? Is not each great, each amiable Muse Of classic ages in thy Milton met ? A genius vast and boundless as his theme, Astonishing as Chaos, as the bloom Of blisfull (sic) Eden fair, as heaven sublime.

I have italicized the corrections or insertions of the Unknown. It will be observed that he makes the description of Shakespeare more distinctive, and dispenses with

soft as the talk Of our Grand Parents,

just one of the crudities to which Thomson,